The Secret Life of Violet Grant (16 page)

V
iolet has only to survey the interior of the Plancks' comfortable electric-lit music room to remind herself how much she owes to Walter.

Of course, Walter himself is not present this evening. But Herr Planck is there, mixing drinks in the corner, and Otto Hahn and his wife, and Lise Meitner. Herr Einstein already sits in his favorite chair, listening intently to his violin, adjusting the strings. Isn't it worth any personal humiliation, any number of dark-haired beauties copulating with your husband atop an antique French escritoire, to be creating music shoulder-to-shoulder with Einstein himself?

Next to her, Henry Mortimer's serious gray eyes are shining with the afterglow of the day's work in the laboratory. “I've read all Dr. Grant's articles, of course, but it's astonishing, isn't it? Like looking inside the actual atomic nucleus.”

“It isn't, though. Not really. You're only seeing the results of one proton colliding with another.” They are sitting on the piano bench. Violet opens up her leather satchel and takes out a few sheets of music, the Bach and the Dvořák, as they had agreed. Her movements are brusque and efficient; she has done this so many times before, and she wants to communicate that fact to Mr. Mortimer, that the sheer wonder of scientific
discovery grays quickly into the drudgery of endless repetition, getting nowhere in particular, persevering out of sheer goat-headed stubbornness.

As she has.

“Exactly. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.” Henry holds up the bow of his violin. “A billion atoms form the tip of this bow, and I've seen the collision of a single component of a single nucleus. It's the heart of matter, the beating heart.”

“You'll grow accustomed to it.”

Henry twirls his bow around his thumb and forefinger. His hands are long and patrician, the nails neatly trimmed into razor crescents at the tips. He tilts his head, watching her with his quiet eyes, his ancient composure. “I only want you to know how much I appreciate your taking me on this summer, Mrs. Grant.”

Violet skims her hand along the top of her satchel and turns to Henry. He must look a great deal like his father, she thinks, because there's very little of the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré in his narrow face, in his small mouth and grave eyes. Only the lashes recall his mother, thick and excessive, a bristle of black around the lighter gray of his irises. He sits there twiddling his violin bow, looking at her expectantly, a thick curl of his overlong hair drooping into his forehead.

“In the end, it was my husband's decision,” she says.

“Well, I appreciate it. It's the most tremendous opportunity. I—”

“Here you are, Frau Grant. Are you sure you'll only have water?” Herr Planck stands kindly before her, every eminent inch of him, offering her a crystal tumbler.

“Yes, thank you. Just water.” She takes it from him.

“I'm sorry your husband couldn't be with us tonight.”

How she hates that look of sympathy. “I'm afraid he had another engagement. And Walter would rather listen than play, I'm afraid.”

There is the briefest of awkward silences, as everybody looks away, except Henry, who lifts his violin to his chin and plays a few notes.

“Shall we start with the Bach?” says Lise cheerfully.

Dear Lise. How might Violet's life be different, if there had been an English Lise Meitner at the Devonshire Institute? Like her, Lise has fought for her place at the institute. Unlike her, Lise has the encouragement and financial support of her intellectual Viennese parents, and she remains unmarried. She works with Otto Hahn in the basement of the chemistry building, patiently discovering the isotopes of various radioactive elements. At present they are investigating thorium. What does Frau Hahn think of this arrangement? Violet can't imagine, because Lise is an attractive woman, dark-haired and large-eyed, and a distinct air of kinship fizzles between her and Herr Hahn.

Violet turns to the piano keys behind her, and Henry rises to his feet, violin still at his chin, and makes his way to an unoccupied chair. Henry has all the notes by memory; Violet has never seen him study a sheet of music.

They start with the Bach. In its elegant symmetry, its intricate phrases, the Violet of laboratory and matrimony soon dissolves. She's been playing with her colleagues for months now, and sometimes it's the only thing keeping her alive, the only thing keeping her whole, this music in which she creates and participates, free from Walter's sharp eyes and his neatly clipped fingers stroking his neatly clipped beard as he reads over her latest laboratory notes, her frustrating lack of progress. The last movement ends, and a sweet silence arrests the air of Max Planck's music room. Beyond the windows, the summer night is falling at last.

A maid arrives with tiny glasses of schnapps. This time Violet accepts one and sips it delicately. Otto and Lise are laughing together at some miscue in the second movement. A few yards away, Herr Einstein's thick, dark head is bent over his violin. Violet takes another sip, another, sets down her empty glass, and approaches him.

“Good evening, Herr Einstein,” she says, possibly the bravest act of her life. She has played Bach with him for months, and still she hasn't spoken with him like this, eye to eye with the brilliant Einstein, whose 1905 paper still ricochets like revolutionary gunfire about the halls of
physics. His line of inquiry lies as far apart from Violet's as the infinite from the minute, but oh, the breathtaking audacity of his thought! The brash overturning of the static Newtonian universe!

“Frau Grant.” He sets aside his glass of schnapps and stands politely.

“Oh, don't bother. I only wanted to thank you for your note this morning. You were very kind to answer me so quickly.”

His bristling black mustache lifts in a smile, and it transforms his face, which usually hangs below his large dark downturned eyes in an expression of natural dole. Violet knows he has a troubled marriage; his wife, rarely seen, is said to be quitting Berlin for Zurich with the children. Perhaps she's already left. Walter says Einstein has a mistress, his own cousin:
You see, my dear? Beasts, all of us.
But Violet walks past Einstein's handsome drooping face daily, and she thinks perhaps he has more in common with her than with Walter.

“You asked an excellent question, Frau Grant,” Einstein says. “I hope my answer was intelligible.”

“The handwriting or the equations?” Violet laughs, or rather the schnapps laughs for her, God bless it.

“Both!” He laughs with her.

“I'm only teasing. Your handwriting was no trouble. I transcribe all my husband's work, and his writing is much worse, believe me.” Violet speaks without thinking, and gets her just deserts: a look of compassion.

“I'm sorry Dr. Grant couldn't be with us tonight,” Herr Einstein says awkwardly.

“Oh, he doesn't miss us a bit. He's at a party in Leipzigerstrasse, very glamorous, loads of courtiers and officials.”

“And my mother.” Henry ranges up alongside. His bow dangles from his fingers. “No fashionable party would be complete without her.”

“At least you have each other, then.” Einstein looks between the two of them and smiles vaguely.

Violet feels a little pink. She opens her mouth to reply, but Herr Planck is already calling them to order for the Dvořák.

Afterward, as they're gathering their music, Violet tries to think of some excuse to approach him again. The room is full of happy chatter, of the exuberant good feeling created from the chemical reaction between music and schnapps. Einstein is speaking to Lise, both of them smiling. Violet gathers herself and steps forward.

Herr Planck's hand falls on her shoulder. “My dear, there's a gentleman here for you and young Mr. Mortimer.”

She turns. “A gentleman?”

Planck steps aside.

Lionel Richardson. Dressed in formal blacks, a silk hat dangling from one hand, a cane dangling from the opposite elbow, silvery-gray eyes gazing quietly at them. His mighty soldier's torso overflows the doorway.

“There you are,” he says.

“Yes, here we are.” Violet looks at him quizzically. Her hand moves unconsciously to her neck, to conceal the startled jump of her pulse. “Why are you here?”

The happy chatter dies away. Everyone turns to take in the sight of Lionel, brimming with outdoor energy, covered in night air and glamour. He leans against the door frame and crosses his arms. “To escort you home, of course. You and Henry.”

“Escort us home?”

“There's a devil of a business in the streets tonight. The usual sort of Saturday revelry, I suppose, but hardly the sort of environment for a gently bred young lady and a chap of Mr. Mortimer's tender years.” He tosses a smile at Henry.

Violet's hands close around her leather satchel. “I am quite capable—”

“I'm sure you are, but I promised Madame de Saint-Honoré that I would see to her son's safety personally.”

“I see.” Violet's pulse calms. Behind her, the scientists have resumed talking, resolutely ignoring the two of them. She turns to Herr Planck and speaks in German. “Are we quite finished here, then?”

“Yes, yes! Go on, before it becomes late.”

“Well said, Herr Planck.” Lionel pushes himself away from the door frame and holds out his hand. “Have you a coat?”

“No.”

Henry draws next to her. “This is quite unnecessary, sir. We'd have been all right on our own.”

“No doubt, no doubt. But mothers will worry, won't they?” Lionel winks at Henry, a soldier's conspiratorial wink, man to man. Henry seems to read something in this wink. He straightens his shoulders and picks up his violin case.

“Ready, then, Mrs. Grant?” says Lionel.

“Yes, quite ready.” Violet says good-bye to the others, an especially warm handshake with Einstein, a kiss on the cheek from Lise. Her friends, she tells herself, and the word
friends
is so alien and thrilling, it tingles her bones with possibility.

Outside, the early June air is still warm, the sky still retaining a faint purple glow from the departed twilight. Distant shouts carry around the buildings, distant laughter, distant tinkling of music. Berlin is enjoying itself this evening, in all the usual ways. A motor-taxi waits at the curb, rumbling with impatience, and Lionel opens the door for them.

“I am quite happy walking,” says Violet.

“But I am not.” Lionel holds up his cane. “My operation was only a week ago, and strictly speaking I'm not supposed to be up at all.”

Violet slides into the rear seat after Henry, and Lionel shuts the door behind them and swings into the front, next to the driver. “Französischestrasse,
bitte
,” he says quietly.

“Don't you have crutches?” she asks.

“Yes, I do.”

The taxi jerks away from the curb, into the swarming melee of Berlin
traffic. After the somnolence of Oxford, Violet can't quite get used to the way the automobiles and carts and delivery wagons crowd the streets of the energetic German capital, even at ten o'clock at night on the first Saturday in June. She looks out the window at the sidewalk. A café swims past her eyes, wriggling with people, students in shabby brown suits and prostitutes in bright silks. They are all so happy, so full of purpose even while lounging about a café, smoking and drinking. Violet thinks of her dark laboratory, her green-white fireworks of atomic energy, the minute scale of her life's work.

“How was the party?” she asks. “I hope we haven't ruined your evening.”

“Not at all. The party was full of German officials in a frenzy of enjoyment, if you can picture it. They're all about to head off for their summer amusements, the lucky ones, at any rate.”

“I'm sorry to have torn you away.”

“They can spare me, I assure you. Tell me, Mr. Mortimer, how you're enjoying your summer
this
far.”

“Very much, sir. I assisted Mrs. Grant with her scintillations today. The most extraordinary thing I've ever seen.”

Lionel laughs aloud. “Yes, I remember it well. I used to be Dr. Grant's assistant, a few years ago, before Mrs. Grant swept in and stole his heart away.”

“
Were
you?”

“Hasn't your mother told you anything? Yes, I was the first man to count those little flashes of light.” He pauses. He hasn't replaced his hat, and his sleek black hair curves in a perfect arc against the blue darkness around them. He tilts his face back toward them. “Do you know what amazed me most? All that space.”

“Yes.” Henry leans forward eagerly.

Lionel holds up his hand. In the yellow-gray flash of a passing streetlamp, it seems unnaturally large, shadow-rugged, each finger thick with strength. “You see? That this apparently solid and immutable flesh,
that everything around us, is only empty space. Empty space, with a few lonely bits of electrical energy spinning about inside. That only one particle from the radium in perhaps ten thousand actually finds a nucleus to collide with. The rest simply stream along unseen, unknowing even, right through the damned gold foil.”

“Astonishing, isn't it?” Violet stares at Lionel's hand.

He lowers his hand and turns to gaze out his own window. They are hurtling down Unter den Linden, a lamplit blur of cafés and people and ambitious new hotels. “I found it rather terrifying, in fact. Knowing this solid world around us is as insubstantial as a dream. Realizing the vast emptiness surrounding every bloody speck of matter in the universe.”

Without warning, the taxicab staggers to a throaty halt before a woman in a floating red silk gown, who dances with abandon in the middle of the street. Her eyes are closed to the astonished traffic around her. The streetlamps gleam like oil on her writhing bare arms.

“Mein Gott,”
mutters the driver. He steers the taxi cautiously around the dancer. As the automobile slides past, she opens her eyes and gazes into the rear window, directly at Violet. She taps the glass with a long lacquered finger, throws back her head and laughs, and then she's gone, disappeared into the tangle of lights and traffic behind them.